


love is goodbye

by MirrorDarkling



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorDarkling/pseuds/MirrorDarkling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hawke and Tabris have a small chat about love, and what it means to say it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is goodbye

She watched him and his lover from a distance, exchanging simple pleasantries. When he approached, it was to swing his giant frame onto the back of his own horse. Beka was more than a little amused, and when he pinned her with a curious glance, she could only point out that she had never heard two people say, “I love you” so many times.

Hawke's surprise was tangible. Beka could only guess that he didn't understand lovers never voicing their affections. “You and Zevran?” he asked.

“What about us?” Beka asked.

How could Beka explain that she preferred the silence? She had always been a romantic. She had dreamed of a husband, children, a small home where she could watch them grow up and play in the fields. Becoming a Grey Warden stalled those ideas, though they remained a pleasant image in the back of her mind. A reminder of what she now protected.

How could she explain how Zevran's actions rang truer than words? Words were pretty things, soaked in deceit and dripping with false hope. She'd much rather have him at her back than his mouth near her ear, whispering things lost in pleasure.

How could she explain that saying it lessened its meaning? Zevran loved once and lost her to betrayal, and he had no intention of finding a companion with her. Beka thought she loved once before and lost him to cruelty, and she had only hoped to find a companion in him.

Even all that was not true, though. Beka said it to the dark, when he slept beside her. Beka said it to herself, when he went off into battle without her. Beka said it in her thoughts, when he bent his head to kiss her.

She knew him, though, and Hawke did not. Hawke knew Merrill, who giggled over flowers and blushed at any lude joke (when she got them). Beka knew Zevran, who was cocky and recited lude poetry to Beka while she looked over accounts until she laughed so hard her sides burn.

Beka knew him, and Zevran could not say “I love you” without first believing he would lose her.

“Do you wish he would say it?” Hawke asked, and perhaps she was wrong; he understood the fear. Beka saw it in the way Hawke looks back to Merrill before they leave the Vigil's gates. Beka only shrugged. It is one thing to want it, but actually saying it – that changed everything. Once he said “I love you”, he would never come back.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a short story prompt for my Creative Writing class, but I've added a bit and actually put in the names of the characters from DA.


End file.
